Tech giant Google has unveiled its first driverless car prototype, announcing that it plans to build around 100 of the models and test them on public roads in "the next couple of years." The cute-looking cars feature no steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedal, and are simply operated by pushing a button. The self-driving car could be available to consumers in 3-5 years, the head of Google’s autonomous driving project says. In the meantime, look for assisted-driving cars that self-drive (loosely defined) under certain limited conditions. Assisted driving cars with all of the features you listed in your last paragraph already exist. My experience with greedy corporations tells me that these insurance companies will keep you at the same rate and just use another excuse to accomplish it. It doesn’t take a genius to see that such a fully self-driven car will never see the road (other than the experimental manned tests). Can autonomous cars see the deer to the side of the road 50 yards ahead and know to slow down before it jumps out in front of you? Can autonomous cars auto-correct themselves when your car suddenly drives over a patch of black ice?
Can autonomous cars know when to maintain speed through a yellow light during hazardous driving conditions, because applying the brakes and risking losing control would actually be more dangerous? Can autonomous cars judge when you’re at an intersection and it’s your turn to go, but the jerk to your left decides to go first anyways, will it be able to stop itself in time before that jerk runs into you? I’ve gotten terribly lost before using Google Maps, because it directs me into the middle of nowhere.
I have zero faith that Google would be able to produce an autonomous car that would safely get someone from point A to point B in the real world. Autonomous cars can and do react faster to unpredictible and chaotic situations found on the road than any human. Everything will need triple redundancy and those test cars are not being tested while surrounded by thousands of other automated vehicles in a complex mix with conventional vehicles. With million of these things on the road the opportunities for interfering external signal sources to confuse the sensors and software interactions between automated vehicles to get into interactive software loops in largely untested. Your unquestioning faith in their sensor system seems completely unwarranted at this point.
The present test are like testing a biologic agent in a petrie-dish and then confidently asserting that it will work equvalently in the human body.
I am continually amazed at how resistant people are to technology that can greatly benefit them.
Airplanes can practically fly themselves, and have been capable for decades of this, but still we have pilots, because the systems can’t handle failure the way humans can.
Human mean-time between total failure is near the life expectancy, 2 humans near infinity, can we say the same for the Google autonomous electronics (no way). There was a case where someone rear-ended my car (wish he was driving a Google car, hehe…) My car was fixed, no cost to me.
I agree with your issues with self-driving cars, but only if we’re looking at them in a vacuum.

Here’s the question: would switching to a largely autonomous system (that drove 99% of the time with the driver only taking over in unpredictable situations like when a cop is using hand signals) save lives overall, or cost them?
So you probably have a badly programed app that causes android to crash, but that is google’s fault? Case in point on the last example, several months ago I was sitting in traffic in the left turn lane at a major intersection(45MPH one way, 50 the other, big wide intersection). I think the obvious problem with this comparison is that ABS -may- create a false sense of security, and thus because of our human foibles and bravado lead us to act irresponsibly. But if self-driving cars are safer, and are tested to be safer than human drivers (like ABS is better than regular ole fashioned brakes) – then that human element is removed, no bravado, no over estimating your abilities. Until such time as testing demonstrates that thousands of these car can simultaneously interact safely with each other as well as with conventional cars you nor anyone else can credibly make any such claims. Just imagine, 100,000 driverless UPS trucks at every intersection and on every highway offramp on your way to and from work.
What I’m going to hate is when these do become reality, the first fatal crash will be BIG NEWS! Google has done a lot of good work on the autonomous vehicle and some of the comments are very valid. Mayor Kenoi Signs Emergency Proclamation in Anticipation of Tropical Storm Darby July 22, 2016Mayor Kenoi’s Statement on the Passing of U.S. Maui hospitals transfer moves forward as state, union reach agreementCrash closes Pali Hwy. To avoid collisions, the car has built-in sensors that can detect objects up to 720-feet away and currently has a speed cap of 25 miles per hour. If self-driving cars can reduce insurance claims by 90% and we see a 50% drop in insurance premiums, you don’t think they’re going to eat that up?
It will cost a fortune to secure and monitor a network like this safely.Second has your computer or tech ever just broke and shut down or got corrupted?
Whether the human or the machine can reactive faster and to a considerable number of variables is questionable. If we compare self-driving cars to the average driver, even current self driving cars are better than humans.
The answer is pretty obvious given that in 2010 (the most recent year for which data is available) one and a quarter MILLION people were killed in driving accidents. I had a traffic cop in front of me and a little old lady driving a luxury car in front of him. It is unlikely that anyone will attempt to get real approval for an autonomous vehicle for the masses in any 3-5 years (zero chance).
According to a report by Bloomberg News, Smith noted, “It gets to be a massive challenge to figure out how will the government come up with a performance standard that is objective and testable for so many different scenarios where failure could possibly occur.
If a driver were to nod off, the car would probably be able to drive safely for miles and miles. Google’s car has driven 700k miles with a single accident that was caused by human error.

They don’t care the semi behind them has to slam on the brakes because they thought they should stop at a yellow light. Part of that has to do with if we should be looking at the underlying electronics.”When it comes to regulating auto safety, NHTSA is more tortoise than hare, partly because government moves methodically, partly because it may not be up-to-speed on technology. Just a bunch of jobless coders working in retail while the previous company makes hand over fist in profits!! In this case, we are talking about a piece of software that is not going to offer the user to install crapware on it.
But insurance companies, bless their pointy little actuarial heads, believe they see data suggesting some drivers think ABS makes them super-human and they can brake later and pretend the road is dry and clear. Last year, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report that took issue with NHTSA’s tech savvy, saying it needed to be more knowledgeable about current car electronics and take the lead in setting car electronics standards proactively. Not to say that the system is hack proof, but again, not Google’s fault because nothing is hack proof. They do not care a first responder is en route to a possibly life threating situation, or if they freak out because a cop is behind them.
In what form it gets released is still to be determined.” Releasing technology is different than announcing a self-driving car going on sale in 3-5 years. For what it’s worth, the guy Google sent to the forum (Levandowski) founded a company before joining Google and has two degrees in industrial engineering and operations research. If you want to sell a motor vehicle, you have to meet an array of fuel-economy, stability, and crash safety tests, and those take time.
The National Academies report was looking back at how NHTSA lacked expertise to deal effectively with unintended acceleration issues. Self-driving cars would have to prove they can drive themselves, deal with jaywalking pedestrians, stop or at least slow when a crossing vehicle runs a red light, and deal with software glitches.
She freeks out and tries to back up so the cop once again hits the siren a little longer this time. Anti-lock braking systems (ABS), which reduces skidding, might actually cause more accidents (the industry wonders) if it leads drivers to think they can drive at speed on snowy roads and ABS will stop them in time.
She finally decided to make her turn, and the cop and I were able to immediately follow her through the turn as we had a green turn arrow or we had a green light and no oncoming traffic.The little old lady is about to have a heart attack probably, so she is driving down the road half way on the shoulder doing at least 40, if not 50 MPH.F***ing cop goes right around her(not a dig at cops in general fyi) like nothing happened!!!! To create a car from the ground up, a new model (not an all-new-for-2013 refresh) takes 3-7 years.
Currently the sensors and hardware (pictured below) cost more than the car they’re mounted on. All that suggests 2020 would be a more reasonable time to think about a completely self-driving vehicle.